


These Lines Aren't Wrinkles, Dear Heart

by notoneforreality



Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [15]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, 007 Fest 2020, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Childhood Friends, Long Lost Friends, M/M, Prompt Fill, Q's Name, Scotland, Skyfall, Team Q Branch, and then they grow up, it's a magical place, the ages are fudged a little, they're just kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24952609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: The boy who will become Q meets the boy who will become 007 long before they each find themselves in MI6.They lose each other for a while, but hearts always find a way back together.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726
Comments: 6
Kudos: 114





	These Lines Aren't Wrinkles, Dear Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for--  
> This prompt from the 2018 anon list: Childhood friends meeting up again at MI6 00Q

Peter is seven when he meets James on a summer camp in Scotland. James is twelve, and he knows everything already, and he’s the only older boy who doesn’t complain when Peter follows him around all day. Instead, he teaches Peter all the secrets he knows about the Scottish Highlands, and Peter listens almost completely faithfully, with only a little more caution than James.

When Peter goes back the next year, James is back, too, and they join forces again, taking every opportunity to slip out from under the eyes of their nineteen-year-old group leader. Their friendship is sealed even faster than the year before, and they leave with each other’s addresses for the purpose of writing letters.

After five years of meeting only at summer camps, James moves to London. Peter is ecstatic to find out that, through some quirk of fate, James is joining the sixth form attached to his secondary school. Now it’s his turn to run James all over the school grounds and teach him everything. Peter’s friends think it’s so cool that he’s friend with one of the sixth formers, but James’ friends think it’s weird that he hangs around with a year eight so much. James tells them to fuck off and gets detention for swearing.

Peter hacks into the school computer and erases the detention from the records because he’s learned how to do a lot of things with computers, now.

They have two years in the same school, after which James goes off to the navy with a solemn promise to write to Peter whenever he can. 

_ And don’t die _ , Peter tells him. _ You’re not allowed to die while I’m still stuck at school _ . And then, because James is annoying and tricky:  _ And not after that, either _ .

Peter moves up through GCSEs, through A Levels, through university, and comes out the other end with two shoeboxes of letters from James, and not much idea of what he wants to do now.

Peter goes to his graduation, and comes home to what turns out to be the last letter from James. It’s a normal letter for the most part, but the postscript says  _ sorry _ and Peter’s reply gets returned to him after failed delivery. 

He doesn’t go home; he stays close to the university and exchanges his part time job at the campus coffee shop for a full time one, and shares a flat with Iain from his comp sci class, who’s staying to do a masters.

For two years, he sticks it out, and then he gets bored and hacks a government agency at a ridiculous hour in the morning.

He goes shopping the next day and comes back to find a very confused Iain and a very stern man sat on their couch.

_ Am I under arrest? _ Peter asks.

_ Are you looking for a job? _ The man replies.

Peter gets a job at MI6. 

He scurries around Q-Branch for five years, alternately working on and in the computers, slowly moving his way up through the ranks. He doesn’t see any of the Double-oh agents, not really. There are shadows of sharp suits and expensive dresses, sometimes, but Peter keeps his head down — sometimes so far down that he’s under the table, fiddling with the towers — and stays out of their way. There are rumours about the Double-oh agents, and he’s not hugely inclined to find out which of them are true and which are only slight exaggerations. 

Double-oh Seven is the most infamous, his assignation tossed around the office and workshops with varying tones of admiration and irritation. Peter helps design a tracker to put in a tie pin and it comes back a mangled scrap of metal and wires. When he stares at it in horror, Major Boothroyd, Q, the Quartermaster, head of the branch, tells Peter he should consider himself lucky it came back at all. 

_ Should I fix it? _ Peter asks, and Boothroyd tells him  _ yes, but don’t give it back to Bond. _

Peter hesitates for a moment, and asks if Bond is Double-oh Seven’s name. 

_ Oh yes _ , Boothroyd says,  _ but I don’t know if it’s real. _

He doesn’t know if it’s real, and there are many people called Bond in the world.

Peter fixes the tie pin for Double-oh Six and tries not to think about how long it’s been since the last letter from James.

_ Do you want some help with that? _ A woman called Ameera asks Peter, when he’s halfway through the code to a comm unit and halfway to falling asleep. A silver pin on her pink hijab winks in fluorescent lights and the flash of it wakes Peter with a jolt. He says  _ yes please _ and they work on it together.

They start rising together, too, until Major Boothroyd sticks them in their own workshop and lets them run free. Peter meets Double-oh Two and is unimpressed, and Ameera meets Double-oh Three and is smitten.

Peter is pulled out of the workshops and put on comms for Double-oh Nine when Boothroyd comes down with food poisoning. He and Ameera are dragged into a briefing for Double-oh One. Ameera leaves halfway through developing an explosive pen for Boothroyd to lead a team of techies. Peter’s curiosity gets the better of him and, on inspecting the device, manages to singe his eyebrows off.

When he’s asked, two days later, to watch over Q-Branch for the day while Boothroyd does important admin work, no one laughs, and it feels odd. He corners a man working on an antivirus software and asks why everyone’s so serious. The man, Sam, says that everyone respects Peter and also it wouldn’t be right to laugh at a superior.

Peter blinks at him.  _ But it’s funny _ , he says.

Then Sam grins, like he was waiting for permission. The atmosphere shifts, after that, into something more relaxed and cheerful, but Peter is still thinking about Sam calling him his superior. He knew that he and Ameera had been moving up in the service, but he hadn’t realised what that meant.

He’s barely had time to come to terms with it, he and Ameera both, over several trips to the pub, when Vauxhall Cross blows up and M finds Peter to tell him that he’s Q, now, and Ameera shall be taking the role of his right-hand woman, R. 

There’s no time to settle in, no time to acclimatise to the role, before he’s being sent out to make contact with Double-oh Seven, a small case tucked into his anorak.

Peter goes to the National Gallery because that’s where he’s been told to go, and he sits in front of The Fighting Temeraire because it’s in the right room, and it has been one of his favourite paintings for a long time. 

Someone moves in his peripheral vision, a sharp suit, and he says,  _ Always makes me feel a little melancholy: a grand old warship being ignominiously hauled away for scrap. _

The suit sits down as Peter sighs. 

_ The inevitability of time, don’t you think, _ Peter says, and then turns to Double-oh Seven.

He freezes.

James Bond stares back at him. His face is more worn than Peter remembers, his eyes more tired, but Peter would know him in any lifetime.

_ James?  _ Peter says.

_ Peter? _ James says.

_ Q now, _ Peter says, and James raises his eyebrows.

There’s no time now, no time for explanations — although Peter already knows one answer; agents can’t have friends, can’t write to civilians between trips to various explosive locales — so they get on with the job. 

James goes home and Silva dies and M dies and Peter stands next to James at the funeral.

They carry on.

When James goes back to Scotland, to Skyfall, Peter goes with him. Peter goes with him when he crumples to the floor, as he shakes and breaks and lets Peter hold him together.

_ You taught me so much about this place _ , Peter whispers to James as he’s hunched in on himself, still crying.  _ You taught me to love this place. I can teach you to love it again. _

You taught me to love you, he doesn’t say. 

He will, later, when they’re back in London, safe in Q’s little house in Stratford. James will say it back, and they’ll both fall asleep in Q’s bedroom, dreaming of two boys running wild around hills and crags.

**Author's Note:**

> Keep notes:  
> \--These lines aren't wrinkles, dear heart, they're just dollops of paint on a new work of art - get it!? bc they meet in front of the painting and bond has wrinkles now bc he's old! okay I know it's a tenuous link but just give me this please I'm in love with The Amazing Devil  
> \--aka: introduction to my R part 2: Q style  
> \--Speech marks? I don't know her (it's called style, babe, look it up)  
> \--don't @ me I know Bond was sat there first in the film but I wanted Q looking wistfully at a ship after he lost his friend and crush to the navy


End file.
